Here's a quick tutorial for painting with oil pastels: ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ SUBSCRIBE to see new content every Wednesday ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 1) Start with a blurry photorealistic background. You don't want a lot of details here, or it won't look as real. It'll just distract from your subject 2) Work objects from background to foreground. 3) When painting a fox in oil pastel, choose a base color for the underpainting. In this example, I took advantage of the white paper by streaking eaking yellow in the direction that the fur grows. This automatically starts to give a layered look to the fur when I put in more details on top of the underpainting. 4) Draw short lines to represent hairs and VERY LIGHTLY blend them with your finger. Draw AND smear those lines in the direction that the fur grows. Light blending of these lines will pull some of the underpainting colors into the new layer and add the effect of having painted lots of detail. 5) Then layer in a contrasting color, maybe some darker hairs. Then layer in some lighter hairs that stand out on top of the darker ones. Go back and layer in whatever color you need to get the look right. 6) Remember, fur is a much like a landscape. Some areas will grow in different directions and some areas will overlap each other. Work from the areas in the background first and work towards the foreground. If you work front to back, you risk messing up the foreground layers when you blend the background layers. By working back to front, you have the chance to overlap the fur quite easily with your finger or a blending tool. 7) Put the most amount of detail and attention on the eyes and the front of the face. Pick a focal point, that point where you want the viewer's eyes to linger. In this painting, I chose the eyes and snout as the focal point. They have the most detail and also the sharpest edges to the outlines of all shapes. In contrast, everything in the background has extremely soft, blurry edges with almost no detail. As the viewer looks at it, they'll assume they see some trees or vegetation, but their eyes will be immediately drawn to the face of the fox. 8) If you have foreground elements closer to the viewer than the subject or focal point, soften the edges. Hard edges will attract attention away from the fox's face. Your viewer will be trying to see details in the foreground instead of where you want them to look. Materials: Sennelier Extra Soft Oil Pastels on Strathmore Drawing Paper